Black Billie Black Dog Rocket Boots G Harry McLaughlin created the SMOG Readability Formula in 1969 through an article,
SMOG Grading – A New Readability Formula in the
Journal of Reading.
SMOG Readability Formula estimates the years of education a person needs to understand a piece of writing. McLaughlin created this formula as an improvement over other readability formulas. You may come across SMOG as an acronym for Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, but it’s widely believed the title is a nod to Robert Gunning’s FOG Index.

McLaughlin started his career as a sub-editor of the
Mirror newspaper in London, but spent much of his life in Applied Psychology. He left the newspaper to pursue a doctorate in psycholinguistics at the University of London. He wrote a thesis titled, “
What Makes Prose Understandable.” After teaching human communications at City University of London, he moved to Toronto, Canada where McLaughlin taught briefly at York University and then to the University of Syracuse, where he published his SMOG Formula in 1969.

Step 2: Count 10 sentences in a row near the beginning, 10 in the middle, and 10 in the end for a total of 30 sentences.

Step 3: Count every word with three or more syllables in each group of sentences, even if the same word appears more than once.

Step 4: Calculate the square root of the number arrived at in Step 3 and round it off to nearest 10.

Step 4: Add 3 to the figure arrived at in Step 4 to know the SMOG Grade, i.e., the reading grade that a person must have reached if he is to understand fully the text assessed.

SMOG grade = 3 + Square Root of Polysyllable Count

The SMOG Formula is considered appropriate for secondary age (4th grade to college level) readers.

The premises of McLaughlin’s SMOG Formula are:

1. A sentence is defined as a string of words punctuated with a period, an exclamation mark, or a question mark.
Billie Black Boots Dog Rocket Black2. Consider long sentences with a semi-colon as two sentences.

Billie Rocket Boots Black Dog Black3. Words with hyphen are considered as a single word.

4. Proper nouns, if polysyllabic should be counted.

Rocket Billie Dog Black Boots Black 5. Numbers that are written should be counted. If written in numeric form, they should be pronounced to determine if they are polysyllabic.

6. Abbreviations should be read as though unabbreviated to determine if they are polysyllabic. However, abbreviations should be avoided unless commonly known.

7. If the text being graded is shorter than 30 sentences, follow the steps below:

McLaughlin validated his formula against the McCall-Crabbs passages. He used a 100% correct-score criterion, whereas most formulas test for around 50%-75% comprehension. His formula generally predicts scores at least two grades higher than the Dale-Chall formula.